Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to providing online media content and, more particularly, to providing online media content for a pre-planned event.
Description of the Related Art
Content aggregators obtain articles for various events and news happenings, from various content sources and present them in an organized and meaningful way for users. The events and news happenings (collectively termed “events”) may be pre-planned or un-planned events. A pre-planned event is an event with a planned schedule time of occurrence, such as sporting events, scheduled meetings, movie releases, award ceremonies (Academy awards, Emmy, etc.), presidential debates, etc. An un-planned event is an event that is not scheduled and occurs spontaneously, such as natural disasters, medical or other emergency, shootings, etc.
With the growing number of content providers generating/providing increased number of articles for each event, it has become increasingly hard for the content aggregators to determine when to publish certain articles for an event and when to suppress certain articles from being published. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that not all content sources provide an expiration date/time for the articles beyond which the articles becomes “stale” or irrelevant. In fact, very few of the articles have clear expiration dates. As a result, the content aggregators are publishing articles for events that include articles that are stale or old making the articles less interesting to the users. Providing stale contents for a particular topic/event will result in users' decreased engagement leading to users dropping off the website.
It is in this context that the embodiments of the invention arise.